W00t! The Windows Phone 7 app that Donny and I have been working on was just approved by Marketplace. It's called Wootcher, it's tracks the deals that happen at the Woot website (you might have to install Zune software to get to the app's link).

I think the app's pretty cool, lol. It's free, so if you have a Windows Phone 7, you should definitely try it out. It looks like this:

I thought it was a pretty fun process to learn to develop apps for the phone, though maybe Donny would disagree, since he did the bulk of the work! :)

So I spend some part of Thanksgiving weekend reading The Windup Girl on the Kindle for iPad app. It's a great novel set in a post-oil Thailand. It's got great characters an interesting plot and a great premise.

But I wanted to talk about the iPad reading experience. I was skeptical that it would work, that the device was just a bit too heavy, and that the lighted up screen would cause eye strain.

It turns out that the iPad is comfortable enough to hold curled up in bed. The lighted screen isn't a strain on the eyes, and I don't have to get up when the light fades. And the experience is just as immersive as reading on a printed page. I love how I never lose my place, but hate that I don't have a sense of how far I am to the end of the book.

It's surprising that books are one of the last media to transition from physical to purely digital, since books actually require much less bandwidth to transfer than music or movies. I guess we are only now getting devices that are good enough for reading comfortably. There's still an advantage to physical media though -- my biggest problem now is that I liked the book so much I want one on my shelf!

Tomorrow is election day here in the US. Washington state has one of the most hotly contested Senate races here, but the atmosphere is relatively muted. Unlike back in the Philippines, where there's a cornucopia of banners and signs and posters, and every square inch of space is covered with election material.

Election day is not a holiday here. And in Washington, you don't even go to a polling center! Everyone votes by mail. It's amazing how reliable the postal service is; and how much of the voting system is based on *trust*.